Witch of the Lake

. . .

In the dark, lonely woods where the rain never ceased, a witch was said to live in a hut next to a lake. The townspeople whispered about her coldness and cruelty and madness. They mostly whispered about her power, though, and how she was willing to offer it for those who were confident—foolish—enough to brave her curses only for those poor souls to end up at the bottom of her lake

In a frozen village beyond the Witch's Wood, there had lived, once, a family wistfully happy. They were all dead now, except for the young son who had seen the blood of his kin spilled down a demon's jaw into the frozen ground. Powerless and desperate and at the brink of what some may had called madness, he made a vow of revenge to find and kill the demon who had killed his world.

In its place, however, he found a witch.

That's their once upon a time.

. . .

"Is it true you drown your victims in this pond?"

"Who are you and why did you come to Juvia's home?"

Gray Fullbuster didn't care much about witches other than what they could offer, though he had to admit this one was pretty with her dark eyes and dampened sky-blue hair and the look of utter, irremediable apathy. He could distinguish it at glance. He knew about apathy. He relished it.

"People say you can help me get more powerful," he said. "So here I am."

She squinted at him, her lips pursed into a thin line. "But Juvia doesn't want you here," she said. "And you're trespassing into Juvia's private property."

"Sorry 'bout that." He wasn't sorry, really, but that didn't matter. "Why won't you take me?"

"Because Juvia can't help you."

Gray sneered. "Can't or won't?"

She slammed her door in his face. The drizzle that had drenched him became a full torrent, infusing the comfortable cold into his bones. Gray turned around, casting one last glance to the hut, the garden at its side and the pretty pond everyone said was the witch's.

He shrugged. Now was the time to wait.

. . .

The man had stayed. He made a shelter out of branches and leaves just at the border between the forest and the clear where her home stood. He came every morning and demanded answers, and after she shooed him away for the dozen time he would spend the rest of the day hunting or crafting or something.

Juvia Lockser was at her wits end.

"When is Stranger leaving?"

He looked over her with dark, dead eyes and shrugged. "When you tell me how to get your favor," he answered. "I need the power."

She gave him a once-over. She couldn't understand why he'd need it. He looked fit with his well-defined muscles and his sharp lance and his equally sharp wit.

"Then you're wasting your time, Stranger," she said. "There's nothing Juvia can offer you."

"The old man I met told me otherwise, though," he said, smirking. "Said when he came here a long time ago he gained magic after meeting you."

Juvia froze. Her mouth fell agape. In the back of her mind she could identify the stranger's analytic look, but the bigger part of her being was screaming. The world had stilted sideways, and she could feel the rain come down in showers of freezing, stabbing drops.

She run back all the way to her hut, not ever looking back.

"By the way," the stranger called from behind. "Name's Gray, not Stranger."

. . .

The witch was ignoring him. She didn't open her door when he called. She didn't answer when he talked to her. She even avoided looking at him. Gray guessed she had had enough of him. Unlucky her, he wasn't done with her. Although he'd stopped trying to approach her, resigning himself to watch.

It was strange to learn so much about a person just by watching them. She always rose early in the morning. She took care of her garden dutifully, every day making sure that the plants were covered not to drown under the constant rain. She liked taking strolls around the forest when the weather lighted to a soft drizzle. Sometimes, she would pray next to her lake, which was weird because she was a witch, and everyone knew witches didn't pray.

She hadn't tried to do anything, not once, even though her displeasure about his stays was evident.

She was lonely and miserable and gloomy.

The witch was, for the most part, a normal person.

That had been an uncomfortable discovery. And now, watching her fret her over garden that had been blown over by a night rainstorm, Gray couldn't but pity her in a way not unlike how he'd pitied himself when hunger stroke in days past. He'd learnt that she subsided except for occasions on vegetables and wild fruits, and now she was empty handed and resigned.

Gray cleared his throat.

"I'm willing to share," he said when she turned, signaling to the beef he'd hunted that morning. She looked at him with big, wary eyes. He sighed. "I won't ask anything in return, my word."

She didn't move. He shrugged and sat down next to his improvised shelter. He had thought this might have been a good way to bridge the gap between them but maybe not. He would have to try in another occasion. There was time. He had his whole life to fulfill his revenge. As long as he lived there'd always be time.

He didn't expect steps approaching. He didn't expect her hesitating for the briefest of seconds before sitting down, all ladylike, in the furthest spot from him. Stupefied, he handed her the cooked meat he had been about to eat.

Her blush was pink and shy and pretty as he watched her dip her head in acknowledgement.

"Thank you," she said in the tiniest voice possible.

Gray nodded, throat dry.

. . .

"People say what about Juvia now?"

"It's true. There're rumors you drown everyone who comes on that lake of yours."

"But Juvia's never—! Juvia wouldn't…"

"Then how is it no one ever comes back?"

"But they leave! Juvia doesn't touch them! They leave when she tells them there's nothing here and when they get tired of the rain and when—"

"Alright, alright. Don't go on a tizzy on me."

"But Juvia has never done anything to anyone!"

"Sure, I believe you."

"Gray does?"

"I'm still here, aren't I."

"Oh. Thank you."

"So. Does that mean there are no corpses there? What? Don't look at me like that. It's a fair question."

"…there are."

. . .

This was probably having the closest thing to a friend felt like, Juvia thought. She had always dreamt of that. He was too grouchy by half and exuded rudeness through every fiber, but she could deal with that. A moody companion was better than loneliness. Talking in grunts was better than silence.

People, she had learnt, never stayed. They had the bad habit of leaving her. She couldn't blame them though, she'd leave too if she could. That was another dream of hers.

But 'the closest thing to a friend' didn't mean they were, in fact, friends. She knew that too.

"If Gray's still holding for this power he seeks, maybe he should stop waiting," she told him one afternoon. It was the last days of Spring. They'd sat around, just talking, and when silence blanketed them in comfort, he had watched her hawk-like like sometimes he wonted. It had unnerved her. "Juvia's not offering."

His smirk was sly, a snake curling on its own. "So you admit you could if you wanted," he said.

"Juvia does," she said, grimacing. "But Juvia'd like for Gray to stop pretending."

At that, he frowned. "Pretend to what?"

"To care."

The words weren't easy to say, even less to admit. The truth always hurt. Then again, the truth might hurt, but pretending hurt more. Pretending had killed her mother. Pretending was not how she wanted to live. If there was anything she could decide about her own life, it was that.

His eyes widened a faction, his lips formed into a line. His expression was still unreadable, though, and Juvia could feel the slight smile she'd plastered on her face waning. She expected him to keep silent, or shrug it, or even confirm it.

"…who says I don't?" he said instead. "I can do both, you know, care for you and for what you can offer."

Juvia's mouth fell open. She saw Gray clearing his throat before sending her a searing look. She flushed at that. He turned, scoffing, and marched towards his tent.

From behind, she could see his ears turn red and his shoulders tense.

Juvia laughed. "That's silly and wrong," she said. "But Juvia appreciates the sentiment."

It was insanity to feel the way she did. It was pretense despite all her objections. But it was an illusion she wished she could believe in.

. . .

Gray had forgotten what normalcy was like. In this clear so far off the world around, time had halted to a crawl. They'd settle into a routine, he and Juvia: in the morning he'd hunt and after lunch she'd tend to her garden while he busied with his craft while they exchanged relaxed conversations. It was easy and comfortable and wistful. Her food was good and her smile pretty and she awed at his stories with a fascination akin to children discovering the big, vast world and its wonders.

At night, however, nightmares of crunching bones and ripped flesh flashed his mind. In those moments, he belittled himself for relishing in such laziness when he had duty to fulfill. He should demand answers; he should ask for what he came for; he should leave before the normalcy swallowed him up. He shouldn't procrastinate by making idle chat without purpose, or waste time by craving wood into little trinkets, a hobby he had thought long forgotten.

He shouldn't be enjoying himself when the murdered of his family waltzed through Earthland as if the demon owned it.

And when a thunder storm came and went by flooding the shelter he created for himself, he thought it was a wake-up call from high up. He prepared himself to leave.

Juvia had different ideas.

"Gray can stay at Juvia's hut," she said. "There isn't much space and no spare bed but we can make do with the couch."

Gray wondered if she was a masochist, the conversation they had barely a month ago still fresh in his memory, or if the loneliness in this far-off forest made one yearn from the impossible.

Gray wondered if he was a masochist too, because what came from his mouth was madness.

"I'd take you up on that."

He followed her to her tiny hut. He helped her setup the sofa. He ate with her on her table and watched as she fretted over him.

"Juvia's never had a guest," she'd explained, blushing. He'd nodded in answer and told her all was fine.

He couldn't believe he had accepted even when night fell and he laid on her couch. He could she her form across the space, curled in her tiny bed in the tiny bedroom with no door.

"Juvia's very glad Gray stayed," she whispered.

She might not have intended for him to hear that but he did anyway. He pretended he hadn't. He turned around. He cursed and grumbled and clenched his jaw so taut he wondered whether he'd pull a muscle. His chest felt constricted and his heart beat to an impossible rhythm. His cheeks, he knew, were aflush in the dark.

He hated himself foremost, for feeling they way he felt.

He was too—glad to stay, that is— and that was the problem.

. . .

"The reason I came here is because my family was killed and I want revenge."

"Why is Gray telling Juvia this?"

"Dunno. I just wanted you to know."

"But Gray's strong already. Juvia bets Gray could fulfill his revenge. He doesn't need more."

"It was a demon. The one who killed my parents, it was demon. You know, those unholy monsters that only magic can defeat."

"…Juvia can't hel—"

"I know."

"…"

"What?"

"Then… if there's nothing for Gray here, why does he remain?"

"…"

"It's fine if Gray doesn't want to answer."

"…I think…I think it's because I like it here. It's nice; I shouldn't but it's nice. Hey. Don't smile like that. Why're you smiling?"

"Juvia likes having Gray here too."

"…I know that too."

. . .

In late-summer, Gray found himself lunging on the couch. The rain had turned into an intermittent drizzle, the air heavy with the heat and the humidity—one that was sheen over the skin and burrowed into the bones leaving one icky and perspiring. He hated it. He'd grown in the far north where ice and snow ate the land for most of the year and when it didn't the sun barely had strength to it. That, perhaps, was the reason he took to the constant rain with pomp. The wetness was irritating and the sudden storm that could drown you a hindrance but otherwise it was no different to blizzards and the bittercold. The heat, though, that he couldn't stand. It left him sweating and heaving and wishing he could hibernate the summer away.

Juvia, who surfed summer in her thick clothing, took pity on him. She had directed him to another pond deeper in the forest—not the one next to her hut with all its stories and warnings and the sad, despondent look that would took over her eyes whenever she neared it.

"You shoulda bring me here way before," Gray said wistfully while checking crystal, fresh waters.

Juvia giggled and then squealed when he stripped to his underwear. Gray didn't care. He bombed into the lake and splashed around until every grim and sweat was cleansed away while Juvia stammered in the background. He took notice of her trying to cover her eyes but not quite and snorted.

"Expected me to bath with clothes on or what?"

"No, Juvia didn't," she yelped. "She just thought Gray'd wait until left alone."

"You aren't getting in?" She hummed, cheeks aflame, bobbing her head to the sides and then up-down. Gray laughed. "You could, you know. Well, your loss."

The rain was light and non-intrusive. The lake cold against the feverish air. He turned her back to her and waded while relishing the feeling of freshness he had missed all summer. He shouldn't have done that. He didn't notice Juvia's following gaze, or the purse of her lips as she looked down on her thick clothes. He didn't notice her fidgeting before her expression set into resolution and want, and when he heard rustling he paid it no mind.

When Gray turned around he found Juvia's clothes next to his neatly folded and Juvia herself paddling around with a silly big grin marring her face.

"Holy sh—"

"Gray said—"

"I know what I said!"

He regretted goading her to get into the lake with him except he didn't. He submerged under the water as he felt his cheeks burning and when he resurfaced he found Juvia not all that better off than him. He harrumphed and swam backwards and away.

"So," Gray began. If his eyes couldn't quite land in the general direction Juvia stood, that was not his fault. "Come around here often?"

He wanted to slap himself for that, but Juvia's gaze was thoughtful as she said, "No. But Juvia'd like to."

The implications behind that statement weren't missed. Gray could feel the heat mounting and his heart doing a somersault that was not quite expected of him.

"Next summer?" he asked tentatively.

"Preferably," she said, smiling.

. . .

Juvia had heard stories about love, epics and tragedies and comedies. They all more or less told the same: love made the heart ache, love made one weak in the bones, love was worth living and dying for. She had never quite understood, not even when her mother would sat her in her lap and told those stories from memory. She had even hated it once, when a strange man came into her corner of the world, proclaiming to be her father and her mother had swooned at his very visage.

It wasn't long after that her father had revealed the truth and, soon, her mother was dead.

"Hey, you heard me?"

"Juvia did," she answered. "Gray wants to go pick mushrooms."

It might have something in her tone that stopped him. It might have been that she didn't even turn to face him when he approached. Either way, Gray stood still behind her.

"You okay?" he said. "You didn't ask if you could come with me."

She shrugged. The depths of her lake were muddy this autumn. It had made her melancholic. It had also made her thinks of thoughts she had wished weren't brought up.

When Gray came next to her and sat down, she looked up to him. Whatever he found there, it made him nod once as if he understood—and perhaps he did, maybe even better than herself.

"Wasn't Gray going to pick mushrooms?" she asked, a bit surprised.

"That can wait for tomorrow," he said.

She nodded, and smiled, and even dared to recline against him. His heartbeat was steady and his dark eyes warm. The thought didn't cast away the worst of it, but his presence was more than she could ever ask for. It was more than she had ever dared to hope for, too. They could lay there for the rest of the season if it was in her power, under the rain, sure, but with someone she had come to care about.

Her smile almost hurt, tiny and wane as it was, but it didn't.

Juvia, once, couldn't quite tell what love was about. Now, she knew better.

Love did make the heart ache. Love did make one weak in the bones. Love was, indeed, worth living for.

Dying for it, however—

. . .

"Juvia's not a witch, but she's cursed and she does have magic"

"I—what. That doesn't make sense."

"See, there was this demon, Deliora, who cursed Juvia's grandmother and all her descendants—"

"Wait! Deliora? Slow down, slow d—"

"—to always live under the rain and linked to that stupid lake and if she ever falls in love—"

"Can we rewind to Delio—"

"—they could give power by giving them her life. And Juvia thinks she is in love with Gray! But she won't!"

"I'm sorry what."

"Gray?"

"…I think you lost me. That's usual from you, I mean, making me confused. But this time it's a bit more than usual."

"It's just… Juvia can give Gray the magic he seeks, but Juvia won't even if she can and loves him."

"…why not?"

"Because if Juvia could this happy with so little, there must be more to be happy for, right? Juvia really wants that. She hopes she can. Juvia… I…"

"…I see."

"Juvia's sorry, but she won't give Gray what he wants."

"…"

"Juvia still loves Gray though. Juvia… I really don't understand it either. Juvia wishes it was easier."

. . .

Gray wasn't sleeping. He couldn't. He had watched Juvia fall asleep in their couch after she had tired herself to tears trying to explain the jumble mess that had been her life, and her mother's life, and her mother's mother's life. It hadn't been pretty to witness her desperation. It had been painful to hear her truths. It had been extenuating to stand and listen, and yet not know what to say, or think, or act.

She was cursed. She loved him. She wouldn't give him the magic he came for simply because she found a reason to live for when she had none before.

She had told him she couldn't pretend anymore.

Under the dim light of the candle, Gray could distinguish the different shades of blue in her hair, and her long lashes that cast shadows in her cheeks, and the stains of tears rolling down them.

Gray breathed in.

The tiny hut now felt claustrophobic instead of homely comfortable. The rain outside was not cleansing but a prohibition of the light. Her lake in more ways that he had ever cared to know was not as pretty as it once was, now littered with unseen corpses. Juvia was no powerful witch, or the answer to all his questions, or a fountain of power he could drink from.

She was just a woman. Cursed, but normal.

Gray breathed out.

Well, he thought, neither could he pretend anymore.

. . .

"I'm sorry."

. . .

Juvia woke up to silence. She made two rounds through her clearing and went as far away from her lake as she was allowed to in order to check every unturned stone and fallen tree. She came back at night, only to be greeted by more silence and, this time, the oppressive feeling of bareness.

She braced herself. When she made the decision to tell Gray everything—from her beginning to her ends—she had waded through all the possibilities. The happiest ones had allowed her to hope for something resembling happiness, both of them tucked away in this tiny forest of hers. Some others had involved begging and doubling down on her decisions and death.

The worst possibilities, however, had their shapes drawn exactly like the empty spot of her couch and the now ownerless crafts on her windowsill. Gray had sworn life and blood to revenge. There was no reason for him to stay when there was no purpose for it.

It was, after all, expected.

And fading out of a dream and into reality, she'd always known, hurt more than the truth. It had been time to wake up from it.

Still, it hurt. More than she could have ever imagined. It hurt, so she cried.

She cried, and cried, and cried, until her tears became rain and rainwater became her lake.

. . .

Winter was bitter cold at the top of the Cold Mountain, but that was how Deliora liked it. He had made a castle out of ice and bones and called it home. Sometimes, he could even expand it with the new fools who would come by in search of glory, or treasures, or, on occasion, revenge. A demon had many ledgers in red after a millennium of collecting them that were due.

"I remember you," Deliora chuckled. "You were the twerp I left to rot in the cold after I killed your parents."

"I am," the boy said.

"Revenge then, boy?"

"Yes."

Deliora frowned. He had expected the boy to be angry. Revengers were always angry. This one wasn't.

"If I kill you," the boy continued, "does all your magic disappear?"

"It does," Deliora said. He sharply watched the boy's gaze hardening and his position stiffen. Resolution behind the anger, and something else buried under that. Deliora might have been a demon, but he could name that feeling for what it was. "Oh, don't tell me I cursed someone you loved too! What an unlucky bastard you are!"

Deliora laughed, and the boy lunged.

. . .

Spring should have come with its floods and the endless spring showers that rotted the wood and the food of her home. It didn't.

Instead, Juvia woke up to a sun peering from gray clouds and no rain to speak of. When in the next day, and in the next day to that, and even in the next day to those, the sun still shone in the sky she couldn't believe it.

Two weeks after that fatidic sunny day, her lake dried.

It was like pulling the missing pieces of a puzzle and completing the picture she had long been deprived from. Elation, and relief, and a good chunk of wanting to lay down and cry out of happiness and not sadness for once. She had basked her days under the sun until her pale skin became red. She welcomed the dryness that chapped her lips. She walked out of the forest she was born and raised in and looked at the mountains beyond she had never seen.

She always came back to her hut, though, which was now crumbling under a weather it was not prepared for. She didn't care.

It had been maddening, but Juvia still held onto whatever silver of hope had taken possession of her and didn't let it go.

A month later, someone knocked on her door, and Juvia smiled.

. . .

"You're still here. Why are you still here?"

"Why did you come back to Juvia's home?"

"People say here lives a witch."

"There isn't. Not anymore."

"I know."

"What did Gray do?

"I killed the demon who killed my parents and fulfilled my revenge. I killed Deliora."

"Oh… Is that why Gray got those scars?"

"Yeah. And I did it for you too."

"Then Gray should have told Juvia!"

"I didn't know if I'd live."

"It was still cruel."

"Better than keep you waiting forever."

"That should have been Juvia's decision."

"Mhmm."

"…"

"I see you're not cursed anymore."

"No."

"Why are you still here then."

"Juvia's waiting."

"Oh."

"…Gray still hasn't said why he came back."

"I… I came here to ask you come with me if you were still here."

"And if Juvia hadn't been?"

"I would have searched, I guess? I didn't think that far ahead. Stop it. Don't laugh."

"It's silly though."

"Anyway. You can get out of this stupid forest now."

"Juvia can."

"So, wanna come with me? I don't have a home, but I think— Wait, are you cryi—?"

"Only if Gray says he's sorry for leaving Juvia behind!"

"I'm sorry. I really am."

"Does Gray really want this?"

"Yes. I wouldn't be here otherwise. And stop crying, please."

"Juvia will go with Gray, and Juvia will stop crying, but only if Gray promises not to leave Juvia alone again like that."

"Stupid. Why would I do that again?"

"Juvia really loves Gray."

"…I hoped for that."

"…is Gray blushing?"

"No. C'mon. Let's go. Any idea where you want to go?"

"Anywhere. Juvia just wants to be happy anywhere."

"That, I can do."

. . .

In the dark, lonely woods where the rain was once eternal but no more, there'd lived a witch. She didn't anymore. The townspeople whispered about the abandoned hut next to a lake in the forest and told its story to any traveler that came by. It'd been a young, angry man who, you see, came one day in search of the Witch of the Lake to ask for power but instead found all her secrets. Flabbergasted and angrier still, he sought out the way to deprive her of all her powers until one day he succeeded and came to defeat her.

Of the witch, it hadn't been heard since.

"But how," one traveler asked one day, "did the boy defeat the witch if he had no magic of his own?"

"Who said he had no magic?" the old lady next to the fire questioned.

Everyone in the inn looked at her. The old lady was said to be as old as the woods and equally as mad. She laughed with a mouth full of nothing at the surprised listeners and sneered at them all.

"Bunch of fools," she cackled. "It was love. It's always about love. You should know by now. Love defeats and wins everything."

A/N: Oh look, I'm alive. This story has been sitting in my harddrive for two years. It was supposed to be a short, simple drabble but it became a monster. Almost an equivalent to personal life! Today I finished it. It's not-that-good but take it as a gift for a fandom I once quite enjoyed writing for. See you in another two years!

All errors, grammatical and otherwise, are yours truly.